2015-03-03T22:38:59ZChildren’s rights and spaces: an ethnographic look at children’s rights in Punjab, India and Ontario, Canada.http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12729
Title: Children’s rights and spaces: an ethnographic look at children’s rights in Punjab, India and Ontario, Canada.
Authors: Bal, JASPREET
Abstract: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most widely signed and ratified human rights treaty in history. The Convention is law in the nearly two hundred countries that have ratified it including Canada and India. This project is an ethnography exploring the effectiveness of the text of the CRC in two contexts, one which is largely structured by text (Canada) and one which is not (India). To map, in depth, the top-down social relations of the CRC the author provides rich descriptions of her fieldwork in the Punjabi village of Butala and the Canadian city of Brampton. Using the new sociology of childhood as a conceptual framework, the author argues that the CRC is inherently flawed because it is in text and can therefore only create change in environments mediated by text.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2015-02-03 15:41:28.2072015-02-04T05:00:00ZA Prisoners’ Project in Emergent Ethicshttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12690
Title: A Prisoners’ Project in Emergent Ethics
Authors: Raddon, Karen
Abstract: The central questions proposed for investigation in this project are (a) What might be the relationship between emergent, intersubjective ethical processes, such as might be claimed to exist in interpersonal relationships among prisoners, and moral systems, such as the rehabilitationist philosophy of the criminal justice system? and (b) In what ways might these ethical and moral systems and processes find expression in the lived experiences of prisoners? To explore these questions a working group was formed with myself and four research collaborators who had spent some time in prison.
We worked collaboratively following a radical pedagogy approach to research, responding to these questions and testing this philosophical model against our lived experiences of prison and beyond. While we did not pretend to reach any specific conclusions on these highly philosophical questions, we were not at a loss to locate examples of our deliberations within our experiences of prison, as well as within the project itself building meaning across philosophy and practice. Thus at the very least we may advance that a framework of emergent, intersubjective ethics can have bearing on experiences of prison and may through further development present critiques and alternatives to the demoralizing spectrum of carceral control and rehabilitation. Further, we may hold that those with experience of incarceration are best prepared and most capable of offering this analysis.
We contributed to the fields of intersubjective, deconstructivist ethics and convict criminology and affirmed ourselves as ethical subjects.
Description: Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2015-01-08 17:42:05.7342015-01-09T05:00:00ZPrecarious Life, Work and Culturehttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12556
Title: Precarious Life, Work and Culture
Authors: Berggold, Craig Josef Condy
Abstract: The contemporary precarious condition, ‘precarity,’ in life, work and culture parallels transformations in national and global economies, in part through the rise of immaterial production. Precarity has led to destabilization and reconfiguration of a class /class system and the creation of a new majority precarious class including domestic and farm workers, academic workers, care givers, part-timers and more. The thesis identifies how a historical moment of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (1979-1999) experienced marginal social protection, racial discrimination, limited legal rights, short-term contracts, vulnerable working conditions and precarious life without health care. The transnational lessons of the CFU include a better understanding organizing precarious citizens today — including what has not worked; importance of visual cultural analysis and counter-visuality to inform resistance. Theories of immaterial labour; porousness of international borders; lack of social protections; shorter career cycles; challenges to traditional craft unions; shift in social values as citizens organize across sectors, geographies and borders; and, migrant experiences as central to the experience of precarity. Confronted with the difficult task of re-imagining old ‘modernist’ visions of ‘class,’ ‘people,’ ‘nation-states’ and many established perspectives of resistance that have been stalemated. The thesis also includes a short survey of visual cultural expressions from twenty-first century precarious citizen groups.
The Master of Arts - Cultural Studies major project is a 96-page illustrated history book (12” x 9”) titled Fields of Power: The Canadian Farmworkers Union with photographs and text by Craig Berggold.
Description: Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-10-02 16:03:56.1342014-10-02T04:00:00ZA Free-Agent of Embodied Subjecthttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12428
Title: A Free-Agent of Embodied Subject
Authors: Ebbs, Paul
Abstract: This research is an exploration of physically-devised performance processes. The paper is in dialogue with a major performance (Loss2Lust), which has been recorded on DVD, and will remain stored at Queen’s University in the Department of Cultural Studies (it has also been submitted to Qspace).
The performance of Loss2Lust reflects a process that is ongoing and self-reflexive, and as such this paper is also a process of ongoing self-reflection about performance within academic contexts.
Description: Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-09-05 18:36:25.8842014-09-08T04:00:00Z